The Paris Apartment

by Kelly Bowen

Genres: World War II; Women's Fiction; 20th Century Romance

Synopsis

This heart-wrenching novel about family and war unearths generations of secrets and sacrifices—perfect for fans of The Paris Orphan and The Lost Girls of Paris.

2017, London: When Aurelia Leclaire inherits an opulent Paris apartment, she is shocked to discover her grandmother’s hidden secrets—including a treasure trove of famous art and couture gowns. One obscure painting leads her to Gabriel Seymour, a highly respected art restorer with his own mysterious past. Together they attempt to uncover the truths concealed within the apartment’s walls.

Paris, 1942: The Germans may occupy the City of Lights, but glamorous Estelle Allard flourishes in a world separate from the hardships of war. Yet when the Nazis come for her friends, Estelle doesn’t hesitate to help those she holds dear, no matter the cost. As she works against the forces intent on destroying her loved ones, she can’t know that her actions will have ramifications for generations to come.

Set seventy-five years apart, against a perilous and a prosperous Paris, both Estelle and Lia must summon hidden courage as they navigate the dangers of a changing world, altering history—and their family’s futures—forever.

Release date: April 20, 2021

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 416

Sample

Chapter1

Aurelia


Paris, France
10 June 2017

The woman was nude.

Painted in a swirl of angry scarlets and oranges, the woman’s arms were flung over her head, her hands outstretched, her hair a cloud of midnight floating behind her. Caught in the shaft of light that fell through the open apartment door, she gazed out with dark eyes from her canvas, angry and accusing, as if she resented the intrusion into her space and privacy. Lia froze in the open doorway, one hand clutching the heavy key and the other gripping the packet of neatly organized legal papers that said she had every right to be here.

And that this unknown apartment, along with all its contents, now belonged to her.

It is an incredibly valuable property, the lawyers had assured her. Your grandmother must have adored you, the administrative assistant had said enviously as she had examined the printed address. And Lia hadn’t replied to any of them because Grandmère’s motives in death were as murky as they had been in life, and Lia couldn’t be sure that adoration had figured in either.

“Utilities should be on,” the building’s concierge said from the top of the stairs behind Lia. The property caretaker was a surprisingly young woman with a close-cropped pink bob and a quick smile who had introduced herself simply as Celeste. Lia had liked her immediately. “I’m not often in the office but I’m always around if you need anything else. Just ring me.”

“Thank you,” Lia replied faintly, slipping the key into her pocket.

“You said on the phone this place was your grandmother’s?” Celeste leaned casually on the stair railing.

“Yes. She left it to me when she passed.” Or at least that was what the lawyers had said when they had summoned her to their offices and laid a steady stream of documents before her. And while the flat had been paid for and maintained from an account with Grandmère’s name on it, as far as Lia knew, Estelle Allard had never lived anywhere other than Marseille.

“Ah.” The woman’s expression softened. “My condolences on her passing.”

“Thank you. It wasn’t unexpected. Though this apartment was a…shock.”

“Not a bad one as shocks go, I think?” Celeste remarked. “We should all be so lucky.”

“True,” Lia acknowledged, playing with the enameled pendant at her throat. Until this morning, the antique necklace had been the only gift Grandmère had ever given her, presented without fuss on her eighteenth birthday. She considered the concierge. “How long have you worked here?”

“Six years.”

“I don’t suppose you know anything about this apartment? Or my grandmother? Estelle Allard?”

Celeste shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t. While I’m familiar with most of the tenants in the building, in truth, I had no idea who owned this apartment, only that it’s been unoccupied since I started.”

On impulse, Lia jammed the packet of paper under her arm and unzipped her portfolio bag. From inside, she withdrew a small painting, about the size of a legal document. It was a vivid, if somewhat clumsy, painting of a manor house surrounded by clumps of emerald trees and silhouetted against a cobalt sky. Along with the key to this apartment, the painting had been the only other thing her grandmother had specifically left her.

“What about the name Seymour? William Seymour? Does that sound familiar?” Lia asked, holding the painting toward Celeste.

Celeste shook her head again. “No. May I ask who he was?”

“No clue. Other than the artist who signed this painting.”

“Oh.” Celeste looked intrigued. “Were you thinking that he was once a tenant here?”

“I have no idea.” Lia sighed, sliding the little painting back into her bag. She hadn’t really expected an answer but she had nothing to lose by asking.

“I can check the building’s records for you if you like,” Celeste offered. “We have archives going back a lot of years. If a William Seymour lived here at one point in time, I might be able to find out.”

Lia was touched by the kindness of the offer. “No, that’s all right.” She didn’t want to waste this woman’s time. At least until she had done a little research of her own.

“Sure. But if you reconsider, just let me know.”

“Thank you. I will.”

Celeste seemed to hesitate. “Are you planning to live here?” she finally asked.

Lia opened her mouth to answer and then closed it. The simple answer was yes, at least temporarily. But beyond temporarily? Lia had no simple answer for that.

“None of my business.” The woman ducked her head. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Lia smiled. “I haven’t made a decision yet.”

“I hope you stay,” Celeste said sincerely. “It would be nice to have—”

The sound of a lock being released, accompanied by a brief torrent of hysterical barking, made Lia turn. An elderly woman emerged from the apartment across the landing and shuffled toward her. A small bundle of writhing white fur was clamped under one arm, a pointy cane clutched in her other hand. She was dressed like a model from a midcentury American advert peddling soap or vacuums, in a wide-skirted floral dress with a pinched waist and a string of heavy pearls at her throat. Her white hair was curled around a liberally powdered face, her lipstick an angry crimson. Color had bled into the deep lines that tracked outward from her lips, and the whole effect was rather macabre. Unbidden, Aurelia could almost hear Grandmère tsk in disapproval.

One should never notice your cosmetics, Lia. Unless, of course, you only wish to be noticed but not seen.

At the time, an adolescent, lip-gloss-loving Lia remembered being annoyed by the cryptic, critical comment. Now, Lia couldn’t say Grandmère had been wrong.

Lia’s neighbour was now shuffling across the marble floor, her eyes fixed beyond Lia at the tall, nude painting propped up inside the apartment and visible in the meagre light. She looked as shocked as Lia had felt when she had first opened the door, though that shock was fading into clear condemnation. Lia pasted on a smile and stepped more fully into her doorway, blocking the view inside.

The woman scowled and craned her neck, trying to peer past.

“Good afternoon,” Lia said politely, her ingrained boarding-school manners demanding that she make some sort of greeting.

In response, the dog resumed its frantic tirade, the shrill noise bouncing mercilessly off the marble floor and plaster walls. The woman’s face soured further, and she produced a piece of sausage from somewhere in the folds of her dress. That silenced the barking, two beady eyes now fixed not on Lia but on the prize held in clawlike fingers.

“You own this apartment?” the woman asked into the ensuing quiet with a voice like sandpaper.

“Yes.” A fact that was still so new and novel that it was hard to answer with conviction.

“I’ve lived here my entire life. Since 1943,” the woman said, her eyes narrowing.

Lia’s smile was slipping. “Um. That’s a long time—”

“I know everything that goes on in this building. And in all that time, no one has ever gone in or come out of that apartment. Until now.”

“Mmm.” Lia made some noncommittal sound. She wasn’t sure if that was a question, a statement, or an accusation. She adjusted her grip on the legal envelope, pressing it against her chest.

“You living here by yourself?” Her gaze shifted to Lia’s left hand.

“I beg your pardon?” Lia resisted the urge to shove her hand in her pocket.

“You seem old to not have a husband. Too late now, I suppose. Unfortunate.”

Lia blinked, uncertain she had heard right. “I’m sorry?”

“I know your type,” Lia’s neighbour sniffed, her eyes lingering first on Lia’s heavy backpack and the portfolio bag, and finally on her bare shoulders and the straps of her red sundress tied around her neck.

“My type?” Lia’s patience was wearing thin, and irritation was starting to creep in.

“I don’t want to hear your music. No drugs or booze or parties. No strange men prowling around my door at all hours of the night looking for you.”

“I’ll try to keep the men confined to daylight hours,” Lia replied pleasantly, unable to help herself.

Celeste, who had remained silent through the entire exchange, snorted in laughter before trying to cover it up with a fit of coughing.

The woman’s head snapped around.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Hoffmann.” Celeste composed herself. “How are you doing today?”

Madame Hoffmann gave the woman’s pink hair a hard look, scarlet lips twisting into a sneer. “Degenerate,” she muttered.

Celeste’s phone chimed, and she glanced down at the screen. “Duty calls,” she said, shooting Lia an apologetic glance. “Let me know if you need anything. And welcome to the building.” She pushed herself off the railing and vanished down the stairs, triggering another hysterical tirade of barking.

Lia used the distraction to retreat into her apartment and close the door behind her, abruptly enveloping herself in a stuffy darkness but saving herself from further conversation.

“No wonder you’re angry,” she muttered in the direction of the nude canvas that rested somewhere in front of her. “I’d be angry, too, if I’d lived across from a neighbour like that since 1943.”

She didn’t get an answer.

The air in the apartment was thick with the scent of age and dust, suggesting that the apartment had been unoccupied far longer than the six years Celeste knew about. Lia set her belongings down and let her eyes adjust to the gloom. Deeper in the apartment, on the side that would face the wide, sunny street, faint lines of light were seeping around what Lia surmised must be heavy curtains covering the windows. Enough light to give the suggestion of shapes but not enough for her to see anything clearly.

Carefully, Lia inched forward out of the foyer, past the dim outline of the canvas, and made her way toward the windows. The floor beneath her creaked with each step as if it, too, resented her intrusion. She reached the curtained wall and extended her hand, the tips of her fingers colliding with a heavy fabric that felt like damask. So far, so good. Nothing had jumped out or fallen on her head or run over her toes. She found the edge of the curtain, rings rattling on their rod somewhere above. Without hesitating, she pulled the curtain back.

And regretted it immediately.

As blinding sunlight spilled through the antique panes, thick, choking clouds of dust billowed around her. Lia gagged and coughed, her eyes instantly watering. She fumbled frantically with the latch on the window, relieved beyond measure when it reluctantly gave way. She pushed one of the leaded-glass panels open a crack, ignoring the groan of protest from the hinges, and pressed her face out into the fresh air.

She stayed that way for a good minute, her head stuck out the window, gasping and hacking and trying not to imagine how ridiculous she must look to people passing by down below. Perhaps she should have just left the apartment door wide open. Perhaps she should have sent the charming Madame Hoffmann in first.

Her coughing finally subsiding, Lia took a deep, fortifying breath and straightened, bracing herself for what she might find. She turned slowly away from the window. And discovered that, upon her death, Grandmère had not left Lia an apartment after all.

She’d left Lia a museum.

Dust still swirled but the brilliant light illuminated walls covered in patterned wallpaper the grey-blue of a stormy sky. Dozens of painted landscapes and seascapes in gilded frames were hung on the wall opposite the windows, some capturing images of bucolic country scenes, others freezing ships forever in their quest across the horizon, and each one bursting with saturated color.

In the center of the room, upholstered Louis XV sofas in dust-covered turquoise faced off against each other across a wide Persian rug. A long writing desk bridged the ends of the sofas closest to Lia, and it was against the desk that the tall, nude canvas had been propped, facing the door to greet anyone who entered.

On the back wall adjacent to the windows, an elaborate marble mantelpiece swept over an empty hearth. A bracket had been mounted to the wall high above the fireplace, suggesting that a piece of art had once hung in the tall space, although whatever was once there wasn’t now. And above her head, a chandelier hung in the center of the room, its dripping, dazzling crystals muted only partially by dust.

On unfeeling legs, Lia headed deeper into the apartment. She stopped at a dainty side table at the far end of a sofa and examined a collection of framed photos. With care, she picked up the first and wiped the glass. A young woman had been captured leaning against a light post in front of a jazz club, wearing a silky, beaded dress that clung to each and every curve like a second skin, a fur stole draped carelessly over her shoulders. She held a cigarette holder in one hand, eyes meeting the camera’s lens with smoky, sensual indifference. Lia turned it over. Estelle Allard, Montmartre, 1938 was written in pencil across the back.

Lia swallowed hard.

Though she had been told repeatedly by the estate lawyers that this apartment was the domain of Estelle Allard, Lia realized that she hadn’t truly believed it until right now. She hadn’t truly believed that her grandmother, who had not once in her life mentioned that she had ever travelled to Paris, much less lived here, had kept a secret of this magnitude for this long.

And Lia couldn’t even begin to imagine why she would have done so.

She set the photo back down and examined the second. In this one, the beautiful Estelle was behind the wheel of a low-slung Mercedes, leaning out the window and laughing at the photographer. Her hair was loose over her shoulders, a jaunty hat cocked over one eye. Lia blinked, trying to reconcile these sultry, fearless images with the rigid, reserved woman Lia had known. She failed miserably.

She turned her attention to the last of the photos and frowned. A German officer stared back at her, unsmiling and severe. From his uniform, it was clear that it was an image from the First World War. Lia frowned and turned it over but there was nothing written on the back. She set the photo down and glanced at a pile of magazines stacked beside it.

She slid the top one to the side. The issue beneath, devoid of dust, was easy to read. Signal blazed from the upper left corner in bold red text, the cover beneath dominated by an image of a Nazi soldier with an intense expression. A strip of the same bold red color ran down the spine of the magazine, September 1942 easily visible at the top. Lia snatched her hand away.

“This is not happening,” she said into the silence, as if saying it out loud would make it true. Because she already knew without opening the magazine what she’d find. German propaganda and glossy pro-Nazi photos, all published at a time when Nazis had overrun and occupied this very city.

Lia stared again at a young Estelle Allard laughing from her Mercedes and the nameless German officer before she turned away from the photos and the magazines and all their ominous implications. With a queasy dread settling into her gut, she made her way past the ornate hearth mantel and around the corner. Here, the space narrowed into a formal dining room. The center was dominated by a rosewood table surrounded by eight matching chairs. On the wall to her right, a cabinet taller than she was filled the space, rows of crystal, silver, and porcelain dinnerware displayed on the shelves.

On the wall opposite the cabinet was another collection of paintings, striking and arresting portraits of men and women in clothing from centuries past. Lia bit her lip hard enough to hurt as the dread intensified. Art had been a desirable souvenir for the Nazis during the occupation, entire collections stolen—

“Stop it, Lia.” She shook her head, not caring how foolish she sounded, talking to no one. “Don’t be absurd.”

Yes, there was Nazi propaganda in the apartment. But a single photo and a handful of magazines did not mean that the paintings on these walls had been stolen or otherwise illicitly obtained. It did not mean that her grandmother had deliberately kept this collection here, in this apartment, for any reason other than that she had liked art when she had been younger. Conjuring conspiracy theories was best left to Hollywood. And radical zealots.

Lia tore her gaze from the paintings and continued through the dining room, stepping into a hallway. On her right, a doorway opened up into a kitchen with a tiny stove, a small refrigerator, and a deep sink set into a countertop free of clutter, save for a single crystal tumbler.

Just to her left, a set of French doors stood open, the dim outline of a four-poster bed identifying this last space as a bedroom. As in the living room, lines of sunlight from tall windows were visible on the far wall. Lia entered the room, skirted the bed, and, with a great deal more care than she had taken earlier, eased the heavy curtains open.

In the light, the room was a decidedly feminine space, the walls papered in a shade of rose, the edges near the ceiling only slightly yellowed and discolored. The room consisted of a double bed, a dressing table and chair, and an enormous wardrobe, all carved with a provincial flair. The bed was neatly made, and the linens, once washed, would likely be the same rose hue as the walls.

The room was impeccably tidy save for a garment that had been tossed carelessly on top of the smooth coverlet, crumpled and forgotten and dulled by dust. It was an evening gown, Lia realized, moving to lift it by its thin straps. A stunning creation of lemon-yellow chiffon and crepe, beaded with crystals, and something that would have been obscenely expensive no matter what century it had been purchased in. Not something one would toss aside like an old pair of socks.

Bewildered, she let the dress drop back to the bed and eyed the narrow, arched doorway in the corner beside the wardrobe. It led into what looked like a modern walk-in closet. A dressing room, Lia guessed, though there was almost no space to walk in. On both sides, dresses and gowns and furs and coats hung crammed together, spilling out on top of one another in such numbers that Lia couldn’t even see the back wall. Shoes lined the floor, dozens and dozens of pairs, and along a shelf at the top, hat boxes were stacked. Smaller jewelry boxes, some of them covered in leather and satin, were piled in front.

“Good Lord,” Lia mumbled, the excess hard to comprehend.

She backed away and cautiously opened the wardrobe next, expecting to be inundated with another jumble of extravagance. But the wardrobe was almost empty, the cavernous interior yielding only a half-dozen gowns.

These gowns, protected from the years of dust, were a collection of couture silks and satins, each one exquisitely embroidered, appliquéd, and detailed. Lia ran her fingers along the length of a sapphire-colored skirt before pulling her hand back, afraid that she would soil the fabric. She closed the wardrobe and rested her forehead against the double doors. The gowns, the shoes, the furs—there was a fortune in clothing here. Just like there was a fortune in fine furnishings and fine art.

All of it hidden for over seventy years.

Lia had fallen down a rabbit hole. An overwhelming, insane rabbit hole that made a jump to abhorrent conclusions far too easy. She lifted her head and took a steadying breath. Assumptions never ended well—a career dedicated to science had taught her that. She would give her grandmother the benefit of the doubt. She would not believe the worst until such time as she was presented with irrefutable proof.

For right now, she would put conjecture aside. Instead, she would make a list of things that needed to be done, tasks that required her attention immediately. Lists were made of numbers and needs, and not speculations and suppositions. Lists were ordered and rational, and they had always helped her focus on what she could control when presented with disorder and uncertainty. Yes, a carefully curated collection of lists was exactly what she needed right now.

Feeling a little better, Lia headed back toward the bedroom doors but stopped abruptly as she caught sight of her reflection. A little tarnished and spotted, the mirror mounted above the dressing table nonetheless revealed the troubled lines that still suffused Lia’s features. Almost involuntarily, she sank onto the little chair, ignoring the dust, not taking her eyes off her reflection. Had her grandmother been the last to be reflected in this mirror? And if Lia could go back in time, what would she have seen? Whom would she have seen?

Her eyes dropped to the surface of the dressing table. A collection of decorative glass bottles huddled in the center. A pair of women’s gloves lay discarded beside them, abandoned where they had been dropped. Beside the gloves, propped up against the bottom of the mirror, was a small card. A postcard of some sort, Lia thought as she reached for it.

It was a black-and-white photo of a long, looming building, a row of Roman columns lining the entire façade like an ancient temple. An impressive display of architecture, marred only by the Nazi flag snapping proudly in the wind in the foreground. Dread returned and manifested into something far more sinister. Very slowly, Lia turned the postcard over.

For the lovely Estelle, it read in scrawled, faded ink. With thanks, Hermann Göring.

Lia dropped the postcard as though it had bitten her and stumbled to her feet, knocking the little chair to the side. Despair warred with revulsion, leaving her nauseated. She was such a fool. Only a fool would have clung to hope. Only a delusional fool would have refused to truly accept the evidence scattered all over this apartment. As far as irrefutable proof went, Lia couldn’t imagine anything more damning.

She still had no idea why her grandmother had chosen to leave her this apartment but the reason that she had kept its existence a secret was abundantly clear. Because her grandmother, a woman who had hung the French flag out every May in celebration, a woman who had repeatedly declared her love for her country, hadn’t been a patriotic citizen at all. Her grandmother had been a liar and a traitor and a fraud.

Her grandmother had been a Nazi collaborator.

Chapter2

Sophie


Wieluń, Poland
31 August 1939

Sophie Seymour had been eight years old when she’d first heard someone refer to her as unnatural.

It had been at Heloise Postlewaithe’s birthday party, an event that Sophie had attended only because Mrs. Postlewaithe had invited the entirety of her daughter’s summer Sunday school class. The party had been an affair marked by fancy frocks with copious ruffles, rich cakes and tepid tea, and games that had bored Sophie to death, quite frankly. She’d wandered away from the shrill fracas of musical chairs and pass the parcel without anyone noticing and made her way to the Postlewaithes’ library that was up on the first floor.

The Postlewaithes’ country manor was impressive, their library equally so. Here, amid the blessed silence and the soft afternoon light, Sophie had found a Latin primer, no doubt a leftover from a previous Postlewaithe’s Eton days. At eight, Sophie was already fluent in French, Spanish, and Italian, though she’d never seen the root language from which all of those had been derived. She’d been instantly captivated and settled down in a warm corner of the room to read.

As absorbed in her newfound study and tucked away upstairs as she was, she hadn’t heard the discovery of her absence. She hadn’t been aware of the uproar and panic when it was finally discerned that an eight-year-old girl was missing or hearkened to the fears that, as the initial search had turned up nothing, she might have fallen into one of the manor’s ponds and drowned.

It wasn’t until a frantic Mrs. Postlewaithe had finally discovered Sophie in the library an hour later that Sophie had any indication that anything was wrong. She’d yanked Sophie to her feet, relief dissolving into fury, and snatched the primer out of Sophie’s hands.

“What is wrong with you?” she’d demanded, her face flushed an alarming shade beneath a stylish coiffure that was still perfectly in place.

“Nothing,” Sophie replied, blinking with incomprehension.

“You left the party.”

“The noise was hurting my ears,” Sophie explained, trying to be polite.

“You ruined Heloise’s party,” the woman hissed. “Ruined it all.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We all had to look for you. We thought you’d drowned.”

Sophie shook her head. “I know how to swim,” she tried to reassure her hostess. “My mum made both my brother and me take lessons before we were allowed to go exploring on our own.”

The woman’s lips curled in disgust. “Perhaps your mum should have also taught you that stealing is rude. Taking things that aren’t yours.”

“I wasn’t stealing,” Sophie told her. “I was just reading. And I was going to put it back when I was done.”

Mrs. Postlewaithe looked down at the Latin primer. “And you’re a liar too,” she sneered. “You can’t read this.”

“I can.” Sophie had never been called a liar by a grown-up before. It made her stomach feel awful. “It’s just Latin,” she tried to explain. “And this book starts with basic grammar in tables and uses that to build up more complex sentences. It’s not that hard. I could show you.”

“I don’t need you to show me anything. I know my place in this world. You need to learn yours.”

Mrs. Postlewaithe stared at Sophie and Sophie had stared back.

“You are an unnatural creature,” the woman continued, her expression as hard and cold as the diamonds that hung from her neck. “No one will ever want you. There is something wrong with you.”

That conversation had been thirteen years ago, but Sophie had never forgotten it.

“Am I unnatural?” Sophie asked, staring up at the ceiling.

Beside her, Piotr rolled over in bed. His dark hair was thoroughly tousled, eyes the color of the Baltic Sea thoroughly amused. “Is this a trick question? A test for new husbands?” He propped his head up on his hand.

“You’re laughing at me.”

“You deserve it with questions like that.” He reached over and stroked her bare shoulder. “You’re not having regrets, are you?”

“I regret we did not do this sooner.”

“That makes two of us.” Piotr Kowalski was smiling as he said it. “If I had known that you would have said yes, I would have asked you to marry me the day you ran me over with your bicycle.”

“I did not run you over. I avoided you and hit a tree. Mostly.”

“No, I think you ran me over on purpose. You couldn’t help yourself,” he teased.

“I ran you over because I was late for work. And you should know that I did my best not to fall in love with you.”

“Mmm.” Piotr leaned forward and kissed her with a thoroughness that curled her toes. “You never stood a chance, wife.”

Sophie managed to nod because he was right. Love had been wearing the green-brown uniform of a Polish cavalry officer and had not cursed or seethed when he’d been sent sprawling by her inattention and haste. Instead, love had gently helped her stagger to her feet, her hose torn and beyond salvage, her knee scraped and throbbing, and her lip split and bleeding. He’d righted her bicycle with easy motions before turning back to her, concern stamped across his features.

She’d made a cake of herself after that, in the face of his kindness and his devastatingly vivid blue eyes, babbling apologies and stammering something about needing to get back to the embassy. He had only wet a linen kerchief with his canteen and wiped the blood from her lip with a tenderness that had suddenly made her want to burst into tears. She’d fled, clambering back on her bicycle and pedaling away, realizing only when she’d reached the embassy that she was clutching his kerchief, now stained and crushed.

She’d locked herself in the loo and unsteadily put herself back together as best she could, thoroughly mortified. The practical part of her knew she’d likely never see the kind blue-eyed officer again but instead of relief, she’d felt an intense regret.

“Why did you come back that day?” she asked suddenly. “To the embassy?”

“Because the extraordinary, beautiful blond girl who kept apologizing in at least four languages stole my only kerchief, and I wanted it back.”

“You brought flowers.”

“Because she had also stolen my heart. Though I never got that back, nor do I want it returned. That will be yours forever, moja kochana.”

Sophie glanced down at the band around her finger. In the long rays of the sun that was beginning its descent over the roofs and spires of the city, the ruby and tiny pearls gleamed with a lustrous glow. “You, Piotr Kowalski, are a shameless romantic.”

“Guilty.” He flashed her a roguish grin. “It’s why you love me.”

“I love you because you are kind and brave and honourable. Because you are patient and gentle and smart.”

“What about handsome?”

“The most handsome man of all.” Sophie smiled.

“Indeed. Do go on. What else do you love about me?”

“Now you’re just fishing for flattery.”

“Yes. You can have a turn later. I promise I’ll make it worth your while.”

Sophie laughed before sobering. “I love you because the day I told